Four traffickers charged in the suffocation deaths of 71 immigrants they allegedly abandoned in a locked lorry this month appeared in a Hungarian court yesterday.
The male suspects -- three Bulgarians and one Afghan -- each face criminal counts related to human trafficking, torture, organized crime, and murder. A fifth man, believed to have been the group’s driver, was also arrested on Sunday.
The investigation into the 71 mostly-Syrian migrants’ deaths in the back of an unventilated box-truck is still ongoing, but officials in both Hungary and Austria believe all the victims died of asphyxiation.
Doors were locked from the outside preventing their egress, police have already determined, and a number of women and children were counted among the dead.
Like many other countries bordering conflict zones, Hungary has seen a startling increase in illegal immigration in 2015, and the desperation of such displaced persons make them ideal targets for criminals.
Traffickers, like the ones apprehended in Hungary over the weekend, routinely take asylum-seekers’ money on promises of safe transport, then leave them in the middle of nowhere, often to die.
The handful accused of perpetrating this latest mass killing of 71 immigrants on the Hungarian-Austrian border did not have full legal documentation themselves, investigators have further revealed.
